Why Republicans Remain Nervous

January 22, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Politico has a story which goes along with the polling results in the previous post which showed that only 19 percent of voters are happy with the direction of the Republican Party. They quote Republican strategists such as Matthew Dowd who warn against becoming over-confident:

Matthew Dowd, who consulted for former President George W. Bush and voted for President Barack Obama: “If any Republicans are running around town celebrating in jubilation, they should remember that in the country’s constant state of change, neither party gets more than a moment.”

Republicans face many obstacles including the number of seats they need to pick up, and their poor cash position compared to the Democratic Party. Many blame this on Michael Steele’s loose lips. They cite another poll similar to the one I mentioned earlier:

But Republicans still will fight against another set of numbers: the large number of voters who simply don’t like the brand the GOP is selling. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found only 30 percent of those surveyed had a favorable view of Republicans. That is 8 percentage points lower than the favorability rating for Democrats. And 22 points lower than Obama’s…

Even Republicans aren’t thrilled with Republicans. A CBS News poll showed only 55 percent of Republicans hold a favorable view of their congressional delegation.

And voters also still don’t trust Republicans with big decisions. A recent Washington Post poll found 24 percent trusted congressional Republicans to make the right decisions for the country — 8 points fewer than Democrats and 23 points fewer than Obama.

“Scott Brown didn’t even really run as a Republican,” Dowd notes. “He ran as an outsider.”

The state of the economy will play a major factor. I suspect that people will vote against incumbents if they are not seeing more improvement but anti-Democratic sentiment could be quickly forgotten considering that most blame the problem on the Republicans:

The WSJ/NBC poll found 65 percent felt Obama inherited the economic mess, while only 17 percent said his policies were “mostly responsible” for the current situation.

Republicans are also concerned about “the lack of diversity among GOP candidates and their supporters” and the “the number of conservatives who will challenge establishment-backed candidates in key races.” Besides draining resources, this could highlight the extremism of the party assuming that the conservatives are able to beat more moderate candidates in Republican primaries.